To enhance the department-specific curriculum in each degree program, Graduate Studies offers studios and seminars designed to support exploration of issues and practices of interest to advanced-level students in all disciplines. These GS electives also help ground studio explorations in the context of contemporary theory and practice.

Graduate-level interdisciplinary studios + seminars

Graduate Studies electives provide opportunities to:

• explore areas of interest beyond program requirements• collaborate on projects with students from diverse disciplines• connect intellectually with the larger graduate student population

Not all of the following courses are offered every year, but this list gives a sense of the types of questions and conversations supported by the Graduate Studies curriculum. All GS electives are open to any graduate student, without prerequisites.

Using RISD as a site for the exploration of strategies for studio-based teaching and learning is the goal of the course. It is designed for students who are interested in models of practice for a future academic environment. The course examines teaching methodologies in graduates' respected fields through case studies, faculty interviews, and article reviews. Learning to teach in a generative and attentive manner can bring teaching closer to one's studio practice. The course starts with course planning centered around learning outcomes. The seminar is composed of guest faculty and graduates, readings, discussions, project assignments, lectures, and two peer micro-teaching presentations. The final outcome is a partial teaching portfolio including a teaching philosophy, course proposals, and a detailed syllabus. Graduates taking this course in tandem with the fall Collegiate Teaching seminar will complete a full professional and teaching portfolio in preparation for teaching applications.

This seminar fulfills partial requirement for the graduate Certificate in Collegiate Teaching in Art & Design.

Graduate elective - seminar

Also offered as TLAD-055G; Register into the course for which credit is desired.

This course offers the opportunity to discover the creative and career possibilities in the growing interdisciplinary field of public art and public practice. During the first half of the course, students research and present aspects of each weekly topic, including: pivotal events and artworks that formed the history of public art from the early 20th century to the present; individual artist's work and approaches to site-specificity; current debates around defining the public, public space, and community; temporary vs. permanent work; controversies in public art; memorials, monuments, and anti-monuments; a case study of design team practice in a public/private development; public art administration models, among other topics. During the second half, students work both individually and collaboratively on proposals and projects: a proposal for a memorial; proposals for a specific site in Providence; and temporary artworks sited in Providence.

How can we add to the future enrichment of our disciplines? How do we make future collegiate teaching a more meaningful practice? This semester-long professional practice course is for artists, designers, architects, and educators and is designed for students who will be teaching during their course of study at RISD and or who plan to teach in higher education after graduation. The course draws upon the varying expertise and pedagogical practices of RISD faculty and guests from various disciplines to provide graduate students with models of teaching that can inform their development as future faculty. The goal is to introduce graduate students to reflective teaching principles and to provide an orientation to the collegiate teaching and learning experience. The course is composed of readings, reviews, discussions and Individual Teaching Practice Sessions where students prepare a class that is observed and videotaped gaining feedback from faculty and peer observers. The major product is a partial teaching portfolio including a teaching philosophy, course proposals and an extensive course syllabus. Graduates taking this course in tandem with the Collegiate Studio seminar will complete a full professional and teaching portfolio in preparation for teaching applications.

This seminar fulfills partial requirement for the graduate Certificate in Collegiate Teaching in Art & Design.

Graduate elective - seminar

Also offered as TLAD-044G; Register into the course for which credit is desired.

How can we add to the future enrichment of our disciplines? How do we make future collegiate teaching a more meaningful practice? This semester-long professional practice course is for artists, designers, architects, and educators and is designed for students who will be teaching during their course of study at RISD and or who plan to teach in higher education after graduation. The course draws upon the varying expertise and pedagogical practices of RISD faculty and guests from various disciplines to provide graduate students with models of teaching that can inform their development as future faculty. The goal is to introduce graduate students to reflective teaching principles and to provide an orientation to the collegiate teaching and learning experience. The course is composed of readings, reviews, discussions and Individual Teaching Practice Sessions where students prepare a class that is observed and videotaped gaining feedback from faculty and peer observers. The major product is a partial teaching portfolio including a teaching philosophy, course proposals and an extensive course syllabus. Graduates taking this course in tandem with the Collegiate Studio seminar will complete a full professional and teaching portfolio in preparation for teaching applications.

This seminar fulfills partial requirement for the graduate Certificate in Collegiate Teaching in Art & Design.

Graduate elective - seminar

Also offered as TLAD-044G; Register into the course for which credit is desired.

Being able to situate your work with respect to relevant social, political, historical, and material contexts (including processes and techniques) is an important skill for any artist/designer. In this advanced research seminar, which is open to graduate students from all disciplines, you have the opportunity to pursue academic research related to the degree project/thesis. The goal of this research is to help you develop and refine your ability to contextualize different aspects of your work and to articulate the interventions you intend to make by making it. Although writing is a regular and important component of the course, this is not a thesis-writing course. It is, rather, a course in which the thinking, writing, and making you do should contribute to the shape of the degree project/thesis.

This class explores the ways that objects and bodies come into contact with one another, asking how objects adorn, articulate, equip, augment, and constitute the person. Our exploration follows three tracks: we examine artifacts from the fields of design, fashion and medical engineering, as well as experimental propositions from the visual and conceptual arts, literature and film; we pair these case studies with scholarship that critically engages issues of embodiment and material agency; and we attend to the political and ethical debates raised by dynamic conceptions of posthuman bodies. Interdisciplinary readings across the humanities and social sciences include: Appadurai, Freud, Haraway, Hayles, Heidegger, Latour, Marx, Miller, and Scary.

For this Professional Practices course, we explore the practical possibilities for your life after art school. Emphasis is on balancing your artistic practice with the financial demands of everyday life, on integrating your career path(s) with your artistic values and integrity, on developing realistic goals and strategies, and on finding "branching paths" that open new prospects.

Various avenues are explored, such as: exhibiting in galleries and museums, starting a business, working on commission, art writing, social practice, and forming a collective, a publication, or an independent gallery. Current financial, practical, and ethical ramifications of each of these avenues are considered. We discuss what matters when deciding where, geographically, to begin your career.

The course provides a number of skills: creating proposals, presentations, artists' statements, and resumes; and obtaining grants, residencies, commissions, art-related employment, studio space, and representation. Also touched upon are art law, copyright, budgeting, and taxes for artists.

There are guest speakers from galleries, public art agencies, design businesses, and a trip to New York City. We meet RISD graduate alumni who are currently developing their careers as artists and designers, and hear about their paths from graduation to living as artists.

This course helps prepare graduate students to be effective educators while fostering a community of shared ideas. Designed to support graduate students while they are teaching in RISD's Wintersession, the course is a practicum in which participants discuss practical and theoretical concerns related to collegiate teaching and learning. As a forum, the course provides a space for group reflection on teaching experiences and challenges in addition to developing effective learning and assessment strategies. Through structured feedback from faculty, students evaluate their teaching effectiveness and document their development as teacher-scholars through preparing a well-designed teaching portfolio. As an immersive teaching and learning experience, graduate students will have an opportunity to share and apply knowledge of student learning and an awareness of student diversity to their discipline-focused art and design instruction.

Graduate elective - seminar

Also offered as TLAD-010G; Register in the course for which credit is desired.

How can timeless human activities such as drawing and painting, relegated to the realm of the analogue, meaningfully engage increasingly powerful tools such as 3D capturing devices, 3D modeling platforms, and contemporary output methods such as 3D printing? How can we learn to intuit in the realm of the virtual and what are the boundaries of this experience? This course allows new ways of "seeing" and "feeling" and uses a computational framework in the design process. Rather than take a conventional approach based on the technical aspects of a specific software program, students are exposed to a rich diversity of potential work flows. The goal of this course is enhancing personal craft and technique through these digital tools while exploring new potential approaches to advanced technology.

Open to sophomore and above.

Also offered as GRAD-4075; Register in the course for which credit is desired.

How can timeless human activities such as drawing and painting, relegated to the realm of the analogue, meaningfully engage increasingly powerful tools such as 3D capturing devices, 3D modeling platforms, and contemporary output methods such as 3D printing? How can we learn to intuit in the realm of the virtual and what are the boundaries of this experience? This course allows new ways of "seeing" and "feeling" and uses a computational framework in the design process. Rather than take a conventional approach based on the technical aspects of a specific software program, students are exposed to a rich diversity of potential work flows. The goal of this course is enhancing personal craft and technique through these digital tools while exploring new potential approaches to advanced technology.

Open to sophomore and above.

Also offered as IDISC-4075; Register in the course for which credit is desired.

This studio-based seminar offers each student in-depth exploration of studio work in progress, both on the student's own terms and in relation to readings chosen by/with the instructor. Most class meetings happen in studios. Each student hosts two studio visits -- one during the second half of a class period, and the second during the first half of the subsequent week's class meeting. The first visit is an extensive unpacking of latent questions, ideas, etc. in the work. The class reads related texts before the next week's meeting, when we return to the same studio for the first half of the class for further discussion enriched by the readings. We aim for rigorous conversations, to expand conceptual frameworks and to motivate ongoing reconsiderations of the studio work. Written requirements: (1) At the end of each visit, all students write follow-up comments directly to the studio presenter. (2) A midterm paper is a researched response to an individually selected reading. (3) A final paper is an extended, individual reflection on the impact of the inquiry, assessing how the reading (and also, potentially, the discussion) has affected studio processes/thoughts. Though this curriculum puts students' work in dialogue with contemporary and historical discourses, the relation between the study and the studio is not necessarily logical or predictable; the think-tank approach invigorates studio processes in oblique, surprising, and generative ways.

The Independent Study Project (ISP) allows students to supplement the established curriculum by completing a faculty supervised project for credit in a specific area of interest. Its purpose is to meet individual student needs by providing an alternative to regularly offered courses.

Permission of Instructor and GPA of 3.0 or higher is required.

Register by completing the Independent Study Application available on the Registrar's website; course is not available via web registration.

The professional Internship provides valuable, exposure to a professional setting, enabling students to better establish a career path and define practical aspirations. Internship proposals are carefully vetted to determine legitimacy and must meet the contact hour requirements listed in the RISD Course Announcement.

This seminar will examine the use of text, language, and images as tools for processing ideas and as catalysts for thinking about and constructing the written thesis. Students will examine and further develop a writing practice in conjunction with (and in support of) their studio practice. The course is an opportunity to explore ideas, techniques, structures, and possibilities within the written thesis. A variety of research practices will be emphasized as a significant part of the writing and thesis building process. The shape of the course readings will depend on the disciplines of the students represented. The placement of the course in the fall semester is intentional - students will leave the class with a thesis concept and topic that will develop and be refined over the course of the academic year.

This seminar will consider the various ways in which manifold artists from Marcel Duchamp through Joseph Cornell, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Louise Lawler, Fred Wilson, Mark Dion and the Atlas Group have made aspects of the museum a subject matter of their work. Alternatively engaged in a critique of museum practice or romantic evocations of the past, many artists for the past seventy years have addressed the staging devices that museums utilize to confer aura on the work of art as well as the makeup of their collections, categorization and behind the scenes storerooms and archives. This history will be linked to an expanding body of writing that has emerged in the past three decades given to the differing discursive narratives that museums and their archives employ. Writers such as Sigmund Freud, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Rosalind Krauss, Douglas Crimp, Ralph Rugoff, and Susan Stewart. will be considered.

This course provides students with the skills needed to fully transform their 2D rendering and drafting skills into effective 3D forms. Through the use of large stationary machines, power tools, and hand tools, individuals will develop the ability to communicate their design skills into highly evolved, tangible forms. Contemporary joinery methods, efficient shaping, and construction schemes will be systematically delineated. Additionally, numerous hardware, fasteners, surface treatments, and finishes will be thoroughly covered throughout this class.

This seminar explores the various ways modern and contemporary artists have written about their work from the 1950s to the present. By examining statements, journals, notebooks, interviews, diaries, essays, and critical texts by a variety of artists - spanning Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and Jack Tworkov through to Andy Warhol, Donald Judd, and Eva Hesse - as well as more recent figures such as Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker, Fred Wilson, and the Critical Art Ensemble, the differing genres that artists have used to describe their work and that of others begins to emerge. Specific consideration is given to the ways in which these literary forms structure the content and meanings of artists' work. The course is constructed around in-class discussion of assigned texts, slide lectures, and visits to each student's studio. The seminar aims to extend the range of texts currently read by students, and additionally serves as a springboard for the development of the graduate thesis.

We tend to think of the contemporary in terms of speed and acceleration, but this class proposes a pause and a rewind. And that the contemporary has snuck up on us, gradually. We're not sure when it began. Where. Why. Or for whom. Perhaps the only point of consensus is that the studio is now embedded in the ideas that circulate around it. This class addresses contemporary art as a set of largely undecidable questions - which, for better or worse, is also a definition of what philosophy is. It therefore aims to provide graduate students with a historical and theoretical mooring in the key arguments and counter-arguments that currently shape contemporary art. Structured around a curated series of twelve invited guest lecturers, as well as class lectures and discussion, The Gradual Contemporary embraces a collaborative, multivocal form so as to showcase a range of competing perspectives, as well as to highlight the diverging viewpoints of museum directors, curators, magazine editors, critics, art historians and artists. Extended question and answer sessions - the conversations part of the class - will follow each lecture, giving students the chance to clarify their thoughts and test their differences, to query or challenge any or every part of the lecture.

This research group will be organized around the theoretical and technological aspects of Optics with an emphasis on its relationship to Glass. We will explore the implications of Optics in realms such as; projection, magnification, perception, imaging, as well as, its role in media. Both historical and contemporary content and approaches will be encouraged. The group will meet weekly for discussion, lectures, "hands-on" experiments and material investigations. While lectures and demonstrations will be conducted by faculty and special visitors, the direction of our research from week to week will be driven by the research that the group brings forth.

Open to graduate students only.

Also offered as GLASS-7015 and IDISC-7015; Register in the course for which credit is desired.

This research group will be organized around the theoretical and technological aspects of Optics with an emphasis on its relationship to Glass. We will explore the implications of Optics in realms such as; projection, magnification, perception, imaging, as well as, its role in media. Both historical and contemporary content and approaches will be encouraged. The group will meet weekly for discussion, lectures, "hands-on" experiments and material investigations. While lectures and demonstrations will be conducted by faculty and special visitors, the direction of our research from week to week will be driven by the research that the group brings forth.

Open to graduate students only.

Also offered as GLASS-7015 and GRAD-7015; Register in the course for which credit is desired.

This is a semester long research study group focused on Alchemy and Glass. As a discipline and a material, Glass is inherently connected to Alchemy. Their combined histories have shaped our understanding of the relationship between material and meaning, the role of process in art and science and, ultimately, the ways in which making shapes knowledge. One of the goals of this research group is to explore the conceptual and material potential of Alchemy through Glass. Our research will combine the examination of practical, theoretical and historical texts along with "hands-on" experiments in Glass Department Shops. The group will meet weekly for discussions, research presentations, lectures and working/lab sessions. As the semester progresses the direction of our research will be determined by the materials brought forth by the group.

Open to graduate students only.

Permission of Instructor required.

Also offered as GLASS-7016 and IDISC-7016; Register in the course for which credit is desired.

This is a semester long research study group focused on Alchemy and Glass. As a discipline and a material, Glass is inherently connected to Alchemy. Their combined histories have shaped our understanding of the relationship between material and meaning, the role of process in art and science and, ultimately, the ways in which making shapes knowledge. One of the goals of this research group is to explore the conceptual and material potential of Alchemy through Glass. Our research will combine the examination of practical, theoretical and historical texts along with "hands-on" experiments in Glass Department Shops. The group will meet weekly for discussions, research presentations, lectures and working/lab sessions. As the semester progresses the direction of our research will be determined by the materials brought forth by the group.

Open to graduate students only.

Permission of Instructor required.

Also offered as GLASS-7016 and GRAD-7016; Register in the course for which credit is desired.

This course will introduce art and design graduate students to empirical, primarily qualitative, and arts-based research methodologies prevalent in contemporary arts and arts education research practice. Students will be introduced to the concept of research methodology and the various ontological and epistemological paradigms that inform diverse methodologies. During this methodological exploration, students will learn about the research process from identifying a research topic through a reflection on personal interests and experiences and a critical review of literature, to situating the research problem within a body of literature and conceptual framework, with the concomitant objective of refining students' research literacy skills. Students may develop a research design for their thesis or a practice based study of teaching as a course project.

Part of an ongoing series of graduate studio electives, this studio will be focused on lighting design. Lighting design is an ever-growing category of furniture and product design, constantly evolving alongside changing patterns of social behavior and technological advances. This hands-on course is an opportunity for students to explore lighting through object design and making. Students are first provided with the technical skills and safety factors involved in creating and wiring a lamp then adding more complicated items such as switches, dimmers, and hardware, and finally moving on to designing and creating functional lighting pieces. We will cover various lamp typologies (sconces, floor lamps, table lamps, chandeliers, pendants, etc. Students are encouraged to work in a variety of materials and scales, developing their designs from sketches, models, and renderings, to a fully realized object. Designs will evolve through in-class discussions, pinups, and critiques from concept to finished object.

Part of an ongoing series of graduate studio electives, this studio will be focused on lighting design. Lighting design is an ever-growing category of furniture and product design, constantly evolving alongside changing patterns of social behavior and technological advances. This hands-on course is an opportunity for students to explore lighting through object design and making. Students are first provided with the technical skills and safety factors involved in creating and wiring a lamp then adding more complicated items such as switches, dimmers, and hardware, and finally moving on to designing and creating functional lighting pieces. We will cover various lamp typologies (sconces, floor lamps, table lamps, chandeliers, pendants, etc. Students are encouraged to work in a variety of materials and scales, developing their designs from sketches, models, and renderings, to a fully realized object. Designs will evolve through in-class discussions, pinups, and critiques from concept to finished object.

There is a common language of casting and mold-making that remains consistent whatever the material one is working with. This graduate studio course begins with an introduction to the materials and techniques of casting and mold-making: plaster, wax and/or rubber. Using the principles of casting and mold-making as a foundation, students begin to explore the more specialized processes of metal casting in the Metcalf Foundry, slip casting in Ceramics, and glass casting in the Glass Hot Shop.

This course is an overview of the basic principles of type design. The focus is on negative space, words, and readability. Students will gain a deeper understanding of typography and increased insight into existing typefaces.

This course explores aspects of human knowledge of living systems, providing a research based approach to such topics as Biodesign, Biomimicry in Materials, and the cognitive phenomena of Biophyllia; the affinity we have as humans to natural living systems in everything from the spaces we inhabit to the metaphors we employ in order to understand complexity in general.

Students wil have opportunities to experiment, observe, and learn about the networked aspects of living materials and processes, using the facilities and resources of the Edna Lawrence Nature Lab. A course objective is to establish bridges between art and design practices and scientific avenues of knowledge which seek to understand and represent properties of living systems. In the process of making these connections, a critical approach is taken to what we think of as knowledge and its communication.

Emerging areas in many design feilds require an appreciation of issues concerning the exploration, protection, promotion and application of what we may call 'living systems thinking', whether this is at nano-, micro- or macro- scales; in materials, in environments, in products and services, in education and in research. Two outstanding principles we can try to employ in acknowledging our dependent relationship with living systems are these; 1/ 'No Waste' and 2/ Redefine the contemporary use of the term 'Valuable' to mean 'Supportive of Living Systems'.

Based in the Nature Lab, the course will combine technical inputs on a range of topics related to Biodesign, Biology, Natural energy systems such as weather and oceans, Biomaterials and living processes, together with workshops on experimental design and visualisation applicable within the different areas of work of the individual student.

It is . a political decision to focus on the materials of art; it means to consider the processes of making and their associated power relations, to consider the workers - whether they are in factories, studios or public spaces. and their tools of production." - Petra Lange-Berndt, How to be Complicit with Materials

This is an interdisciplinary course about materiality. We will explore the many materials we use as artists and consumers -- how they are formed, extracted, developed, circulated, and used, and how we think about them. We will look at the physical world through three lenses: science/production, theory, and art practice. These three approaches will run concurrently through the semester so that students will be simultaneously investigating, reading, and making work.

1. Science/production: We will look at material science, the chemical elements, and the most common materials artists and designers use, from glass to concrete, metals to plastics. We will delve into the economic, environmental, and social impact of their use and fabrication. We will explore excess, waste, and recycling, visiting waste facilities.

2. Theory: There will be discussion and readings from critical theory, economics, and literature, as these disciplines touch on the study of materiality in relation to art practice.

3. Practice: We will have two ongoing projects. One foregrounds materiality; the second foregrounds process and production. For the first work, you will make a work that is primarily about its own materials. For the second project, you will create a work of art that holds the history of its own making. We will look at precedents for both approaches in art of the 20th and 21st century.

There will be films and videos, guest speakers, readings, presentations by participants, course resources, and trips. Participation in class discussions is required.

This combination studio/seminar course explores the relationship between art and language on multiple scales. We collectively examine - through in-class discussions, lectures, readings, and critique of studio assignments - how our relationships to language make possible an aesthetics of communication, a space where visual and verbal intersections speak of interactions between cultures. Lectures present the work of artists who use text, translation, voice, and language learning as strategies to parlay their socio-linguistic perceptions into agency. Critique of student work produced in response to assignments focuses on an exploration of language within and around each student's art practice. This course is recommended for those who speak more than one language or are interested in multiple Englishes and intercultural communication as material, subject, and foundation for creative excavation.

Climate is at once everywhere and nowhere. Climate is a biophysical concept, describing the conjunction of weather, time, land, water and life. Climate can be used to describe political or economic conditions. Climate can also mean a feeling, a mood, a setting for cultural life. Understandings of climate have changed over time, in conversation with political, social, economic, and cultural contexts. This seminar investigates critical geographies of climate, and asks how these geographic understandings of climate and climate change might inform and critique design responses to climate futures. Geographers have had a long engagement with climate, from physical geography and climate science, to using regional differences in climate to explain (and enable the exploitation of) the diversity of human and more than human life, to the most recent efforts to understand the politics of climate change and its uneven impacts across the globe. In the era of climate change, institutions, businesses, policymakers, activists, artists, designers, and individuals increasingly try to come to grips with the value, meaning and manifestations of climate and climate change. Throughout the semester, we will draw from core human geographic concepts including scale, space and place, representation, power and difference, to examine emerging design discourses around climate and climate change. These core concepts will structure readings, discussion, and case studies. We will examine design responses to climate change and the Anthropocene including: sustainability and sustainable design; resilience and resourcefulness; as well as adaptation and transition. We wrap up the seminar with an examination of social movements organized around climate justice, as a way to synthesize these concepts and cases, and to look toward possibilities for our shared climate futures.

As Paul Robeson said "Artists are the gatekeepers of truth". This course will engage with pivotal and complex social issues facing our communities/societies. A noted social justice organization will provide a design brief based on the desire to create greater brand awareness of an issue critical to its mission through various media / disciplines and targeted messaging. The course will consider how art + design interventions can integrate, interrupt, expand or address critical issues through creative media. Students will engage in and learn about the process of working with a client and developing client relationships. Estimated Material Cost $150.00

As Paul Robeson said "Artists are the gatekeepers of truth". This course will engage with pivotal and complex social issues facing our communities/societies. A noted social justice organization will provide a design brief based on the desire to create greater brand awareness of an issue critical to its mission through various media / disciplines and targeted messaging. The course will consider how art + design interventions can integrate, interrupt, expand or address critical issues through creative media. Students will engage in and learn about the process of working with a client and developing client relationships. Estimated Material Cost $150.00

How do you transform an existing text or piece of music (or both!) into a world for a performance to take place? How do you design a space to help tell a story?

During this studio course students will explore the process of transformation and storytelling as they create scenic designs for performance.

During the design process students will gain an understanding of the relationship between the audience and the performance as well as the relationship between the scenic design and existing theater architecture.

Students will create designs for the three main types of performance spaces: the proscenium theater, the thrust stage and the "black box". Graduate elective - studio

This course helps prepare graduate students to be effective educators while fostering a community of shared ideas. Designed to support graduate students while they are teaching in RISD's Wintersession, the course is a practicum in which participants discuss practical and theoretical concerns related to collegiate teaching and learning. As a forum, the course provides a space for group reflection on teaching experiences and challenges in addition to developing effective learning and assessment strategies. Through structured feedback from faculty, students evaluate their teaching effectiveness and document their development as teacher-scholars through preparing a well-designed teaching portfolio. As an immersive teaching and learning experience, graduate students will have an opportunity to share and apply knowledge of student learning and an awareness of student diversity to their discipline-focused art and design instruction.

Graduate elective - seminar

Also offered as TLAD-010G; Register in the course for which credit is desired.

FULL SCALE [GRAD-078G-01]: Grad Studies 3D/Wood Studio, CIT Bldg Instructor: Tucker Houlihan This course will focus on the graduate level inquiry of wood-based construction designs and commensurate skills. Lighting and upholstery techniques, as well as outside vendor protocols, may also be employed pursuant to the graduate student's design needs. Graduate students will develop a multi-lateral skill set applicable to their area of study. Thesis concepts are often explored within this class. Students concentrate, in sequence, six weeks of Studio Based Learning of techniques and skills followed by six weeks of a dedicated, full scale, designed and executed piece. Located in the Center for Integrated Technologies, CIT Bldg, the Graduate Studies Wood Studio will focus on contemporary and traditional: joinery, shaping, and vacuum lamination construction techniques. In addition, metal (cold working) techniques and manipulation are also covered. Surface treatments and finishing methods for metal and wood will be covered throughout this class.